President John Agyekum Kufuor of Ghana has instructed authorities of basic schools in the country to revisit the teaching of Religious and Moral Education (RME), which hitherto had been removed from the syllabus, reports Daniel Abugah, special to ASSIST News Service.
President Kufuor made the call when he addressed school children at the country’s 51st Independence Day celebration. The call was in response to persistent calls made particularly by Christians and Muslims for reintroduction of the subject in the schools’ curricular.
The president expressed displeasure about the negative moral impact of globalization on the youth through the mass media. He therefore urged the school children to balance their academic learning with that of their moral duty.
“The television, the Internet and other modern gadgetry undermine cultures and moral values. The result is that humanity is already confronted with the challenge of a serious split between knowledge and morality. Unless mankind finds a way to overcome this challenge, there is a real danger of it becoming less than human.
It is for this reason that government has decided to revisit the reinstatement of Religious and Moral Education in the school curriculum”, President Kufour told the students. He added that no matter the academic and professional acclode they achieved, the best education in the end is the one that would enable them to appreciate the common dignity of man; stand up for what is right and be each other’s keeper.
The general secretary of the Christian Council of Ghana, Rev. Dr. Fred Degbee in an interview with Radio Ghana commended the action of the president. He said religion and morality were the signal light of the world, and they should be encouraged at every level of society.
Whilst Christians and Muslims embraced the directive of the president to reintroduce the RME into the basic school’s curriculum, a traditional African religious group, the Africanian Mission, did not see the idea as good news. For them the teaching of RME would promote foreign culture at the expense of African values.
RME which was introduced into the syllabus of Upper Primary and Junior Secondary Schools (now Junior High School) some years ago, aimed to encourage the sense of moral values among school children in the country. But it was removed last year as a result of new educational reforms in the country.
Report from the Christian Telegraph
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